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Thanksgiving 2019

As the earth longs for rain, my soul needs God, my heart waits for God, my mind waits for God, day and night the challenges present themselves, but I put my trust in the Lord, and I walk to do his will. His love and grace sustain me, into the fortress where my Savior lives that protects me and calms my soul.

The goodness of the Lord made me walk here, He put before me a chosen life, in everything I give you thanks, Lord. He presents Himself abundantly in the grace of each day, in small and great miracles, He makes me look beyond the circumstances! Of fears and failures.

To believe in the grace of God and to know that everything comes from Him that gives me deliverance and growth. It teaches me the difference between living by grace and passing through grace.

Living everything I receive from life as grace is a gift, a gift! Cheerful or sometimes sad it is important to realize that there is always a form of communication from God in everything that happens to us.

When we pass through grace without recognizing who we are, we will easily lose communication with God and stagnate in time and space, and we run the risk of thinking that we are the center of the world.

So, I pray for this in thanksgiving, for the daily graces of my life.

For by grace you are saved through faith; and this does not come from you; it is the gift of God.
(Ephesians 2:8).

Lord, thank you for the gift of grace, which makes me humble and prepares me for the next day….

And he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. I will gladly glory in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me (2 Corinthians 12:9).

I thank you, Lord, for your mercy which sustains me, because I easily abandon you and I need you so that I do not fall…

Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom we also have an entrance by faith to this grace in which we stand; and we glory in hope of the glory of God (Romans 5:1-2).

I also come to thank you for the peace that your Spirit pours out on me and calms my heart and all my senses….

What shall we say then? Shall we remain in sin, so that grace may be more abundant? Not at all! We who are dead to sin, how can we still live in it? (Romans 6:1-2).

May I, Lord, walk and live in your grace, and may the walk with you transform all my being.
For sin will have no dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but evil under grace (Romans 6.14).

For under your shadow I put all my history and all that I am.

For what? shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? not at all!
(Romans 6:15).

You know all about me, weaknesses, acts, omissions, fears, longings and desires. I am made up of you…in your image.

But the law came that offense might abound; but where sin abounded, grace abounded; that as sin reigned in death, so grace might reign for righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
(Romans 5:20-21).

And I take possession of the abundance of your…

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1.14).

For now, we are one, because by grace the Lord dwells in me.

And we all receive of his fullness, with grace upon grace (John 1.16).
Amen.

Erika Santos, novice NDS
St. John in Montana community